


Half-Full

by Kammy



Series: TG Femslash Week [3]
Category: Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: Also this is really not edited at all I apologize, Blood, Cannibalism, F/F, Ghouls being ghouls, Roleswap, Tokyo Ghoul Femslash Week
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-16
Updated: 2016-02-16
Packaged: 2018-05-21 03:27:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6036100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kammy/pseuds/Kammy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Akira can't remember much about it. She remembers the raid, Amon lying on the snow, and then a dark, cold room. "We have to remake Kaneki," she could hear them say.</p><p>And then, there was the hunger.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Half-Full

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cupofbrouhaha](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cupofbrouhaha/gifts).



> For cupofbrouhaha because you're the one who opened my mind to Akira/Rize. :) And also written for TG Femslash Week for the day 3 prompt, "taste."
> 
> The second half of this was so hastily written though... I'm so sorry if it doesn't make any sense, or the characters are ooc, or if there are grammatical errors.

 

Honestly she couldn’t remember much of it. Or rather she could, but only in fragments, puzzle pieces that didn’t form a full picture. They were disjointed, blurred in her head, too strange and unsettling for it all to seem real to her.

It was all like something from a dream. Or rather, a nightmare.

There was snow and blood. There was the Owl Extermination mission, the raid on that one quiet-seeming coffee shop right under their noses in the 20th ward. There was Amon, a clump on the ground, red pooling around him, seeping into the snow. And she was running, running to him, heart clumped high in her chest, icy wind stinging her eyes and ears ringing.

There were some ghouls. She recognized them from briefings: a white haired man and a ghoul of indeterminate gender. There was movement and a fight, but it was over almost as soon as it began.

The last thing she saw was a ghoul’s mask: blank, except for a toothy grimace drawn on its white surface. Then, there was a sharp, ripping pain her stomach—and then nothing.

After that, there were only flashes. Darkness—then another tearing pain in her abdomen. Nothingness—and then a tiny, cold hand running across her cheek. Silence—then a giggle, some voice talking around her.

“We have to remake Kaneki,” a woman’s voice said.

She would wake up to find herself restrained, cold metal under her and around her wrists and ankles. She would struggle, throat throbbing sorely as she tried to call out. Sometimes there was someone there, shushing her, sticking a needle in her right before she drifted off to sleep again. But most of the time there was no one, and she called and struggled right back into sleep.

And then—there was hunger. A horrid, wrenching hunger in her stomach, and a bitterness in her mouth.

She slept.

 

* * *

 

Amon was there. But not long. Not long enough.

He was unchaining her one moment, and the next she was looking at the floor. She had been thrown over his shoulder she realized. She also realized she was drugged.

“You have to go to the CCG,” he told her. “You have to make it back.”

But then she was lying alone in a back alley, unable to lift her head, the haze only slighted lifted. She could watch as Amon left, but that was all—she couldn’t speak, or even move her lips.

Wrenching in her stomach. Bitterness seeping through her mouth. And then, she slept.

 

* * *

 

When she finally regained control of her limbs, she tried to figure out where she was. What ward. What street. Where the nearest human residence was.

Unfortunately, there wasn’t time for that.

She was attacked almost immediately. Aogiri members, if she could tell by their cloaks.

She didn’t have the strength to fight them. But she didn’t need that much strength to get away, to bite and claw and throw them, frantically remembering every defensive maneuver she had ever learned. In a little while she was running, running, right up some abandoned building, jumping and eventually climbing as they crawled after her.

There were eventually no places left to run: just them, and all the miles between her and the ground. So she jumped.

In hindsight, perhaps that wasn’t the wisest decision.

She felt her bones crack underneath her, her spine snap. She thought she would die, was almost certain she already had. But she didn’t—she just stayed there, writhing on the ground, voice hoarse from screaming, vision lit up with bright red. And she was burning, burning right inside her stomach, pain searing every part of her.

“Hungry,” she managed to gasp out. “So, so hungry.”

She hadn’t heard anyone approach. But suddenly there was a voice, murmuring and thoughtful.

“Hungry, you say.”

Suddenly, there was a hand on her cheek, moving to drape over her jaw, opening her mouth. Then something filled her mouth—something warm and sweet.

“Eat, then,” the voice said.

Akira swallowed.

 

* * *

 

When she woke, she decided that it had to be a dream.

How much of it had been a dream, she couldn’t say. But there was no way she could have survived such a fall, so that at least couldn’t be real. But the raid, Aogiri, and Amon—

She groaned and tried to move. Only her fingers twitched. Slowly, she became aware of the surroundings: filth everywhere, eye-watering stench, and hardly a speck of light. Akira choked a moment

“Awake, are you?”

Akira moved her eyes. It was a woman, hair long and wild around her, face smudged. The woman’s eyes narrowed at her, looking a little annoyed.

“Can you move?” she asked.

Akira tried. Besides something of a shudder, she couldn’t manage anything. The woman tsked at her.

“Useless,” she said.

Akira blinked heavily. She recognized the voice. It was the one she’d heard the last time she’d been awake. But she didn’t bother asking questions about that. There was really only one thing on her mind right now.

“Water,” she croaked.

The woman looked at her with an expression on her face that reminded Akira of what a human might have right before they crushed a particularly disgusting bug underfoot. Akira recoiled inwardly at the reaction, flinching and closing her eyes.

She could hear the woman get closer. “Open your mouth,” she said.

Akira did, peeking her eyes open at the same time. The woman held her head up, and pressed a glass to her lips. Akira drank.

“Thank you,” she said.

The woman scoffed. “You better heal fast,” she said. “Before I run out of patience and leave you here for them to find.”

Akira’s throat tightened. She let her eyes close, and listened as the woman stalked off.

Her stomach wrenched for a moment with hunger, but she ignored it for the moment, and drifted off to sleep.

 

* * *

 

Flashes, it was nothing but flashes of a dream. The woman pressing tender meat to her mouth, softly bidding her to eat even as she told her she was pathetic, useless. The woman lifting her, shushing her as she cried out from the pain in her back, telling her they had to move.

“You get scraps,” the woman told her. “That’s all. I’m not going to sacrifice my own meals to feed you. And you better heal on them, or I’ll leave you be to bait for Aogiri.”

But the woman’s voice was soft even if her words were cold, and she ran her fingers through Akira’s hair.

“Heal,” she murmured. “And be glad that you’re getting this one chance.”

 

* * *

 

She didn’t know how long before her head starting clearing, but suddenly she was awake and the hollowness inside her was more painful than ever. She groaned.

“I’m hungry,” she said.

But there was no one—not even the cruel-eyed woman from before. She tried to move again, but she could hardly manage even a shudder through her limbs.

“Food,” Akira called out, a little louder. “Please.”

She heard footsteps sloshing through the filth. She lifted her head to see who it was.

It wasn’t the woman. It was someone in a red cloak, one of _them._ Akira could only squirm.

“No,” she said. “Go away.”

But she couldn’t even drag herself away as the person snatched her.

“Found it,” the ghoul said, voice gruff. He was talking into some sort of walkie-talkie. “In the basement of some smelly abandoned factory.”

It should have been over. But instead, something hit the man from behind, forcing him to drop Akira. Her face hit the floor, and she couldn’t see the ensuing fight, but she saw a flash of red and heard a scream and the sound of gutting flesh. Akira’s fists curled.

“Weak.” It was the woman from before, voice low and harsh. “So weak.”

Akira felt a hand on her hair, and suddenly she was being yanked up. She winced, pain shooting through her back. Teeth clenching, she opened her eyes. It was the woman grabbing her.

“All this time to heal, and you still can’t even stand,” she said. “How pathetic.”

Akira grunted.

“Why did I decide to waste my time with you,” she said, more to herself. “To piss off Aogiri? Are you even worth the trouble?”

The woman let her drop like a rag doll. Akira hissed.

“You better start being worth it,” she mumbled. Akira could watch her now. She was going over to the corpse of the ghoul from before, putting her hands on it, and tearing suddenly. Akira shuddered a little, eyes widening, transfixed—but she couldn’t think. Everything in her head that would normally be running commentary on this, analyzing every detail, was silent.

“You want food, don’t you?” the woman asked. In the dim light, Akira could see a bit of a bloody smile. “Here you go.”

She dangled it right over Akira’s head. Akira flinched, turning her head away.

“That’s…” she rasped. “I...”

She was going to say she couldn’t. But she didn’t know why she couldn’t. There was a reason, and she struggled to remember it, but it was so far away.

Blood dripped on her mouth, and Akira found herself licking it. A rush swept through her, and before she even knew what she was doing her teeth had latched onto the meat, pulling more down, swallowing it. Her mouth was filled with the most intense taste of her life, bitter and sweet and warm: the best thing Akira had tasted in her life.

Everything was soon a blood red rush. The woman dangled raw flesh in front of her, and Akira snapped at it, her body animated by hunger like a puppet. The woman laughed, and dangled it away from her.

“One-eyed, huh?” the woman said, smirking. “You’re one of those freaks, then.”

Akira snapped.

“You’ll have to do better than that,” the woman said. “Fight for it. Or do you know what they’ll do? They’ll string you up, gag you, tear pieces out of your body one by one. Your whining for food will fall on deaf ears then.”

Akira’s head spun, her vision blurring. She was an observer to herself, to some kind of show this light-haired woman was putting on, biting at strands of meat like a dog. She could feel—feel the warmth suddenly crackling through her body right down her spine, as though tiny bits of her bones were knitting back together.

“Fight harder,” the woman said. “Bite like an animal, jump—No one else is going to sit around and feed you after this.”

Everything was white for a moment, a rush running through her whole body. And then, Akira could crawl up again, sit up on her knees. Her vision cleared, though her head still spun.

The woman was looking at her with red and black eyes, grinning. There was blood smeared over her mouth.

“Much better,” the woman said.

 

* * *

 

Akira had an image that roamed her mind afterward—that she’d seen the blood on the woman’s face and felt a twist deep in her gut and leaned forward, licking it off.

“Cute,” the woman had laughed.

Amon had turned away from her, but the woman didn’t. Instead, she had turned her head, and then their lips were on each other, moving. She could taste the woman—and she was warm and wet and soft and sweet, so sweet. The sweetest thing Akira had ever tasted.

But it had been something from a dream. She was in her body one moment and then out of it the next, once again a spectator as her body moved on its own, mind blank, washed clean from a deep rush of excitement. Everything was light and blurry, hazed over just like in a dream.

It hadn’t been real.

When Akira awoke the next morning, she could move her limbs, see out of her own eyes, and think. Her first thought was of her father. His imaged fluttered in her minds eyes, sneering the way he had when talking about ghouls.

Her second thought was of Amon. “You have to make it back to the CCG,” Amon had said. The words rang in her then, and she shuddered.

The woman wasn’t around. But Akira thought of her, and the meat, and that flash of red she’d seen the night before.

_A ghoul._

Akira picked herself up, and fled without another thought.

 

* * *

 

When she made it back to the CCG, she decided that most of it had been a dream, or a hallucination.

She hadn’t jumped off the building. She hadn’t eaten a ghoul’s flesh. Those had just been waking nightmares. And she definitely hadn’t kissed—

No. No use thinking about it.

The interior of the CCG building was so clean and white that the walls and the floors seemed to blur into each other. She trailed in dirt and a little blood, and left traces on the pristine furniture. She cringed a little inside at it all.

“Where have you been?” they asked. “How did you escape?”

She told them about Aogiri, about Amon saving her and leaving. She didn’t tell them about jumping off the building and surviving, because that couldn’t have happened. She didn’t tell them about eating a ghoul’s flesh. And she didn’t tell them about the woman.

It had almost been a month since the raid, they told her, and that made her stomach drop. They congratulated her. They said they were happy to have her back. She nodded. She wasn’t smiling-should she smile? Was it odd that she wasn’t? Should she fake it?

It was a man who offered her a snack, holding a plate out in front of her with a small sandwich on it.

“You must be hungry,” he said.

And she realized she should be. She hadn’t eaten in days. She hadn’t even thought about eating in days. All she could think about was that nightmare, the meat dangling in front of her, slurping down her mouth. Sweet.

She should be hungry, so she took a snack.

She had to spit it out.

 

* * *

 

 

 She expected things to stop happening in flashes when she got back to the CCG. They didn’t.

They questioned her again. She answered. Investigators came up, patting her on the back, surrounding her, congratulating her.

“A miracle,” one said. “You’ve come back from the dead,” another said. “Good job, Mado,” said yet another.

Their faces blurred together. She didn’t know them. She felt nothing, no relief, no sense of accomplishment or safety. Just this gray, indeterminate blur around her and an unsettling twist in her stomach.

No—there was one face she recognized. But he didn’t come up to her. Instead he fled, getting lost in a sea of faces.

She followed.

 

* * *

 

Takizawa’s was the one face that stuck out to her in the gray mob. When she cornered him, she realized that she felt something, finally. It was like a hand clutching her heart, grasping it so she could feel every beat.

“Mado,” he said.

His voice was a little high, and tense. His shoulders were up high, and his fingers twitched at his side. Akira watched him, waiting.

“I see you made it back,” he said, obviously making an effort to sound formal. “Well I guess I couldn’t expect anything less of you—Ms. Top of the Class.”

He sort of turned up his nose and looked away as he said it. It was face of annoyance, just like the ones he’d made at her before, only this time there was a hollow ring to it.

His fingers twitched tensely. She realized she’d been staring him down.

“Takizawa,” she said. “Is that all you have to say to me?”

His face crumbled with guilt. “I-I,” he swallowed, voice raising. “I mean—!”

She realized what the feeling inside her was—hope. Hope that from the familiarity of this one person, she could take comfort. That there was something to go back to. That one thing could be the same.

But none of that was true: one look at his face told her that. The feeling withered inside her.

“Mado,” Takizawa said. “I’m—I’m just…”

She looked at him, but his words faded right as they left his mouth. She strained to listen, but found her attention wandering.

“Would you…” he gulped. “Would you like to… go get something to eat?”

She stiffened, thinking of the sandwich she’d spit out before, and that nightmare of flesh dangling in front of her. What should she say to him? She struggled for a moment, then opened her mouth and then—

A flash of long, tangled hair across the street.

Akira’s eyes shot to the figure immediately, her blood rising suddenly. Her heart pumped, ears ringing with her own pulse.

 _Is it her?_ The question thrummed inside her.

But no—it wasn’t. It was some other woman with long hair and a similar color. Akira blinked, dizzily, head still throbbing from the sudden rush.

“Mado?” Takizawa was saying, worriedly. “Mado, are you alright?”

She turned to look at him for a moment, silently.

“I need to be going,” she said.

 

* * *

 

Five days. She had gone five days without eating. She counted, trying to keep track in the hazy mess that her life had become. She was told that Maris Stella had gone to an animal shelter in her absence—Akira’s ears throbbed from the silence in her apartment.

The CCG told her she needed to have a medical examination. She agreed—and then didn’t show up for the appointment, and rescheduled for the latest date possible.

Six days without eating. She found the shelter they had taken Maris Stella too. They told her the cat had gotten out and no one knew where she had run off to. At any rate, she certainly hadn’t made it home.

Seven days without eating. Takizawa caught her eye sometimes, always to look guiltily away. He seemed jittery compared to before, like someone had sucked all the bluster out of him and replaced it with fear. Perhaps she should have pitied him, reached out.

Eight days without eating. She rescheduled her appointment again, saying that she had car trouble and would not make it on time.

Nine days without eating. She stayed inside. She looked at Maris Stella’s empty bowl and for the first time since everything had happened, she cried. She thought about Amon, and why he hadn’t made it back to the CCG yet. She thought about her father, and what his face would say if he looked at her now.

Ten days without eating. The CCG called her up about her avoidance of the hospital.

“Is it possible that you have acquired anxiety about medical processes due to your time with Aogiri?”

She hung up.

Eleven days without eating. They called her again. She expected it to be about the appointment.

“We would like to discuss your future in the CCG,” they said, instead. “We have a very sensitive assignment that we would like you to handle.”

Akira frowned, suddenly queasy. “Alright,” she said.

 

* * *

 

Kaneki Ken. An artificially created half-ghoul. A nineteen year old boy.

Also, a wheezing body currently strapped down with quinque cuffs, a bandage over his eyes. Arima had captured him, they said.

“We think it would be best,” they said, “if he were to work with a female investigator who could act as a sort of mother figure—he’s been crying out to his own mother on occasion, you see.”

Akira didn’t take her eyes off the half-ghoul. “Why me?” she asked.

“You’re an outstanding investigator,” she was told. “And we felt it would be best if the woman assigned wasn’t in danger of forgetting that he’s not human.”

She stared at the boy there, behind the glass, and remembered a giggle, and a flash of green.

 _We have to remake Kaneki,_ Akira remembered hearing. The world suddenly snapped into the place, all the tiny puzzle pieces clicking together.

Eleven days without eating. Eleven. How had she not guessed earlier?

Her stomach churned. It wasn’t the hunger a human should have felt after eleven days of fasting. It was subtler, roiling away inside her in the background, silently creeping up on her.

The boy behind the glass was breathing, straining a little in his bindings, more from discomfort than from rebellion.

“He would not be considered human by the CCG?” she asked.

“We would let him act as an investigator,” someone said. “But…”

She listened to what they said silently, letting it sink in. Disposable, they said. To be killed on a moment’s notice, they said.

“Give me a week to think about it,” she told them.

“Of course. Meanwhile, don’t you think you should have your medical evaluation…?”

When Akira left, it was so, so hard not to run.

 

* * *

 

She didn’t know where to run. Or even if she should. As she looked around though, everyone’s face made her jump, everyone seemed like a sudden enemy.

And the twisting in her stomach grew day by day… and she had no idea what to do about it.

There were small tasks that she could do at headquarters while the higher-ups waited on her response, whiles she stalled for time to figure out exactly what she should do. She set her mind to them: organizing paperwork, data entry—all the work that no one ever wanted to do.

“Mado’s so dedicated,” they all said. “Ever after her ordeal, she’s working so hard.”

She should turn herself in, and tell the CCG the truth. That was the dutiful thing. That would best further their purposes in the fight against ghouls. Her own safety or comfort was not the point.

Akira told herself this. And yet, she did not turn herself in. Instead, she missed another appointment, thinking of what looks the nurse might give her if they tried to put a needle in her and it broke. Or how they might deal with her after. Or how long they’d let her get away with avoiding it.

She was starting to think about flesh. She was starting to think of cracking bones and peeling the soft parts off. She was starting to think about blood dripping from a woman’s lips, and about how sweet it would be to lick it up.

Time was running out.

 

* * *

 

When she saw that flash of hair again, it felt like salvation. The woman smiled at her, and somehow it looked like the gentlest thing Akira had ever seen in her life.

“Hello dear,” the woman told her. “It’s been a while.”

Her hair was still wild and matted, and her clothes were tattered. There was dirt underneath her fingernails, and her face glistened with sweat. Somehow, though, Akira saw something imperious in the way she held her head, and the curve of her back.

She waited for some kind of bitter remark about Akira running off. Instead the smile never left her, and she turned walking merrily along her own way.

Akira stood, dumbfounded for a moment. Then, without thinking, she found her feet moving, walking and then walking, drawn forward to this woman. This ghoul. Thoughts rose in her about alerting the CCG, but they died as soon as they surfaced.

She had so much to ask her: _Who are you? What did you do to me? Why did you save me back then?_ She imagined herself talking to the ghoul, explaining why she would turn herself in to the CCG despite her own misgivings. Somehow, her frenzied thoughts told her, she had to justify herself to this woman.

Really, though, she never got the chance.

Instead, she starting to hear voices shouting from a corner. The woman. Some man.

“Go back?” the woman laughed. “So you can chain me up in a basement again, feeding me pitiful portions so I don’t get strong enough to escape?”

“That was for you own good,” the man said back, voice deep.

“My own good,” the woman said mockingly, before her voice turned into a low growl. “I can’t tell if you believe that yourself or if you only expect me to swallow that disgusting lie. As though you weren’t withholding food to stop me from returning to my own strength. As though you weren’t afraid.”

The man didn’t sound fazed. “Yoshumura said—”

“To hell with that!”

There was a struggle. Akira heard something slam against a brick wall, followed by the woman’s cry.

The rest happened in a flash.

Akira threw herself out there, eyes flashing quickly over the scene before she felt herself be skewered. Sharp little knives rained down on her. She could feel her body being torn into pieces, the joints of her legs giving out from the onslaught. An ukaku—oh.

She had shielded the woman from the blows, hadn’t she? Had she… meant to do that?

There wasn’t an ounce of compassion in those eyes as Akira stumbled from the attack. There was only surprise, a little bewilderment. But then, Akira fell forward and the woman caught her.

“You shielded me?” there was a little laugh in her voice. “How cute.”

 

* * *

 

Everything else passed in a violent blur, like bloody puzzle pieces, fragments that didn’t quite fit together. Akira could remember something emerging from her back, and she could see the face of the man they were fighting—face awash with acute horror. She could remember kicking, biting, fighting not like an investigator but like an animal. And then, the scenery was flying by: running, limping from some weight that pulled down one of her shoulders.

“You’re adorable,” the woman told her when they were finally alone, safe underneath some bridge where Akira could hear water rushing. There was blood smeared all over the woman’s mouth, dripping right down her chin. “Your kagune isn’t coming out right. You really are a freak huh? A freak among freaks.”

Akira spat, and blood came out of her own mouth.

“A failure. That’s what you are,” the woman cooed at her, taking Akira’s face in one of her hands. “But you know, we can probably fix that.”

“What?” Akira asked.

The air was suddenly awash with red. The woman—the ghoul—had pulled her kagune out. Akira’s eyes widened.

“You’re hungry, aren’t you?” the woman asked. “How long have you been wandering about with your stomach half-full?”

“I’m not—” Akira started, but then something warm wound around her waist.

I’m not going to eat, she could have said. I’m not going to be like you, she could have said. I’m not going to stay here any longer, she could have said. I’m going to turn myself into the CCG tomorrow and let them decide my fate, she should have said. I’m not a ghoul, she should have said.

“My dad,” she said, instead, voice croaking, tears suddenly running down her face.

_How would he look at me now…?_

The woman stroked her face. “Shh.”

Then, the woman leaned in and Akira tasted sweet blood. Everything else disappeared in a haze, the rush taking over all of her senses and thoughts. She could taste her, feel the bump of her teeth, and then the next moment the woman had pulled away. Akira’s teeth latched onto something more substantive, something as thick and red. She bit, and the most intense, bitter taste of her life rushed down her throat, lighting up every inch of her body.

Everything was a red haze, and the woman’s bloody red smile was looking down at her.

“There you go,” she said softly. “How does it feel to be full?”

 

* * *

 

_“Akira, huh? What a pretty name. You can call me Rize.”_

**Author's Note:**

> Honestly, I'm not sure what Akira would do after this. Would she run off and strike out on her own as a ghoul? Or would she return to the CCG? And how would Rize factor in--would they part and go their separate ways, or would they stick together out of mutual interest and fascination?
> 
> Anyway, I hope you


End file.
